This invention relates to an improved apparatus and method for comparison. In particular, this invention relates to an apparatus and method for comparing objects with a standard for the objects. More particularly, the invention relates to an improved apparatus and method for comparing actual parts with previously manufactured, acceptable parts and/or design specifications for acceptable parts.
It is often necessary and sometimes critical to determine how close a manufactured part comes to parts that have previously been determined to be acceptable or to the design of an acceptable part. It is not often possible to measure parts completely once manufactured so as to determine such important measurements as shape and wall thickness, heretofore, without destroying the part to be measured. Prior art devices have utilized computerized tomography to create scans of slices of a part. These prior art scans, however, result only in individual slices of a part which then are analyzed by an engineer. Because of the time consuming nature of the prior art scanning devices and the necessity for an engineer to review the scans, scans of only a limited number of predetermined "critical" specific locations have been analyzed in the past.
Thus, there is a need in the art for an apparatus and method wherein the whole part may be analyzed to determine the shape and wall thickness of the device throughout and compared to design specifications throughout. It, therefore, is an object of this invention to provide an improved apparatus and method for non-destructively comparing objects, such as manufactured parts, completely and automatically without need for engineering review of only a limited number of specific scans.